The Remaking of Resilient Urban Space: A Case Study of West Hartford Center 1980 - 2012

As a result, I argue that our understandings suburbanization and gentrification fall short of conceptualizing and understanding the remaking of smaller suburban spaces such as West Hartf

Supervisors:

Alan Latham, PhD Senior Lecturer in Geography

And

Andrew Harris, PhD Lecturer in Geography and Urban Studies

I, Donald J Poland confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been

indicated in the thesis

_

Donald J Poland

Chapter I Introduction - The Remaking of Resilient Space: A Case Study of West Hartford Center 7

Chapter II Urban Theory: Exploring and Conceptualizing Urban Space and the Remaking of Space 22

Chapter III Ecological Resilience: A Metaphorical and Theoretical Framework for Understanding the

Remaking of Urban Space

51

6.20 Entrepreneurial Emergence – Hospitality 1990 – 1999 125

6.40 Gentrification and the Remaking of Resilient Space 151

Chapter VII Government Intervention: ‘The West Hartford Way’ 160

7.10 Managing Change – the Urban Growth Machine and Ecological Resilience 161

7.40 Case Study: Blue Back Square, ‘The West Hartford Way’ 186

Chapter VIII Consumption and the Production of Space: Consumers and the Co-Creation of Space 195

8.20 The Consumption of Space – Experience, Community, and the Center 201 8.30 The Vocabularies of Space – West Hartford Center 207 8.40 The Geography of What Happens – Co-Option and Adaptation 214

Appendix I: Consumer Interview Questions and Demographic Sheet 260

Appendix III: Coding for Interviews – Codes Paired with Research Questions 266 Appendix IV: West Hartford Center – Storefront Database Analysis 268 Appendix V: Storefront Database Maps (Mapping Change) 269

Map 2 Connecticut Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) 15

Figure 7 Farmington Avenue Across from LaSalle Road 1990 and 2011 96

Table 6 Three Words – Consumer Vocabularies of West Hartford Center 212

vocabularies and understandings of suburbanization and gentrification, I seek to explore how urban theory informs us about change in smaller cities and smaller suburban spaces I argue that much of our urban understandings juxtapose the city as one kind of space and the suburban as another kind of space even though the

distinction has become blurred As a result, I argue that our understandings

suburbanization and gentrification fall short of conceptualizing and understanding the remaking of smaller (sub)urban spaces such as West Hartford Center

Utilizing a case study approach, I explore the space of West Hartford Center and how the Center changed—was remade from a suburban town center to a regional center of middle-class hospitality and sociality—from 1980 to 2012 To accomplish this, I introduce ecological resilience as a metaphor and theoretical framework for thinking about and working though our understandings of urban space, the processes

of urban change—suburbanization and gentrification—and how and why (sub)urban space is remade Through the metaphorical and theoretical lens of ecological

resilience, I explore West Hartford Center as a complex adaptive system that has been resilient—having the capacity to absorb shock and disturbance while maintaining its function and structure In doing so, I explore how the actors and their actions—the business owners, government officials, and consumers—coalesce into a dynamic process of re-creating urban space Through this approach and my findings, I argue for more contextual geographies of place and geographies what happens; including the need for more and better studies of small city urbanism

Key words: Small City Urbanism, Suburbanization, Gentrification, Post-Suburban,

Urban Ecology, Ecological Resilience

A Case Study of West Hartford Center

1.00 The Large Urban Bias

As of 2010, approximately 249 million Americans lived in urbanized areas (Census, 2010) Of the 249 million persons living in urbanized areas, only 81 million live in the 10 largest metropolitan regions The majority, 168 million persons or 67%

of the United States’ metropolitan population, live in smaller (4,500,000 persons or less) metropolitan regions For example, only nine U.S metropolitan areas have over

5 million persons, only 14 metropolitan areas have over 4 million persons, and only

17 metropolitan areas have over 3 million persons The 50th largest metropolitan area has 1,054,323 persons

Not only do most American urban dwellers live in smaller urban areas—metropolitan and nonmetropolitan (Ori-Amoah, 2007)—, the majority live in

suburban places outside the central city (Lang, et al., 2008; Lang, et al., 2009; Frey, et al., 2004; Keil, 2013) According to Wendell Cox (2006), approximately 36% of the population in the 10 largest metropolitan areas live in the central city while 64% live

in urbanized areas outside the central city (Cox, www.demographia.com) Gallagher explains (2013: 8-9):

Looking at the broadly defined ‘metropolitan’ regions of our country, which is where more than 80 percent of Americans live, the percentage of us living in the suburbs is higher, 61 percent … Over the past half century, the portion of people living in the suburbs has steadily grown, from 31 percent in 1960 to 51 percent in 2010

Viewing the American urban experience as both a smaller urban and suburban experience raises questions about urban research, urban theory, our understanding of urban places and the contemporary American urban experience Can urban theory based mostly on the form, function, and individual site and situation of large urban places (i.e Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York) help us to understand smaller urban places (i.e Hartford, Providence, and Raleigh)? For example, The Chicago School (Park and Burgess, 1925) focused on Chicago, today the third largest

metropolitan region, as the model of American urbanization Scott and Soja (1996),

2010) most often utilized New York City as their urban laboratory to explore and explain gentrification Amin and Graham explain, “[t]oo often, single cities – most recently, Los Angeles – are wheeled out as paradigmatic cases, alleged conveniently

to encompass all urban trends everywhere” (Amin and Graham, 1997: 411) They continue “[i]f it ‘all comes together’ in Los Angeles, the implication is that all cities are experiencing the trends identifiable in Los Angeles and that we do not really need

to understand these processes” (Amin and Graham, 1997: 417) While understanding the forces at work in Los Angeles or other large cities is important and provides value

to our urban understandings, I am cautious as to how these specific space-time

experiences of large cities and metropolitan regions translate to the scale, site, and situation of smaller urban places Therefore, I argue that our urban understandings are challenged by what can be called the large urban bias—that so much of our urban (and suburban) understandings result from the study of large cities and paradigmatic cases

This bias should create concern regarding our attempts to understand smaller urban places (Bell and Jayne, 2006, 2009; Jayne, et al, 2010), especially when the majority of urban inhabitants live in smaller cities Can our urban understandings based mostly on the specific histories, forms, functions, sites, and situations of large urban places help us explain and understand the unique urban experiences of smaller urban places (Paradis, 2000, 2002; Chen and Bacon, 2013)? Or do our urban

understandings from large urban places have limits when applied to smaller urban places? For example, Holling and Goldberg explain (1971: 227):

We know that a city of 500,000 residents has more than five times the variety

of activities a city of 100,000 has We also know that below certain threshold levels, certain activities do not occur Thus, suburban areas and smaller cities just do not have great art museums, operas, symphonies, and restaurants These activities appear to occur above certain population, or density,

thresholds

Related to this concern of the large urban bias is also how we understand and apply scale to our urban understandings (Jayne, et al, 2010) For example, Richard Florida’s creative class and creative cities indexes are calculated at the metropolitan

scale points to another concern—the juxtaposition of what is central city against the suburban or those spaces outside the urban core Unfortunately, this juxtaposition of city versus suburb often results in the city being privileged as one kind of space over the suburban as another kind of space, often asserting a singularity of suburban space (Kunstler, 1993, 1998; Duany, et al., 2000) Differentiating between that which is urban and suburban may be easy to achieve in large urban places, such as New York City (Jackson, 1985) and may not be as easy in smaller urban places such as Hartford For example, most of Hartford is more streetcar suburban (Warner, 1967) than urban Furthermore, the juxtaposition and differentiation can be even more challenging in cities such as Detroit, where the overwhelming majority of Detroit’s land area is occupied by sprawling suburban strips and residential neighborhoods occupied by single family detached housing How the urban and suburban are conceptualized, that

is what constitutes the city versus what constitutes the suburban (Lang, et al., 2008; Teaford, 2008) may also blur our urban understandings (Champion and Hugo, 2004; Nijman in Keil, 2013)

Associated with the large urban bias is also the tendency of urban research and theory to focus on the spectacular and exceptional urban spaces and processes For

example, Hannigan (1998) explores the Fantasy City, mostly spectacular sites of

consumption in large urban centers Zukin (1991) explores mostly large urban

Landscapes of Power, while Duncan and Duncan (2004) explore Landscapes of Privilege in Bedford, a wealthy New York suburb in Westchester County While each

of these studies informs us about different kinds of urban places and spaces, Times Square, Disney, and Bedford are limited in their translation to other places and spaces This generalization of our urban understandings is also seen in popular culture

writings about cities For example, Jane Jacobs’ 1961 seminal work, The Death and

Life of the Great American City which focused on Manhattan and Greenwich Village,

has become a model and ideal for urban neighborhoods and urban lifestyle (Duany, et

al., 2000; Kunstler, 1993; Speck, 2012) Joel Garreau’s popular 1991 book Edge City:

Life on the New Frontier explained the new phenomenon of suburban-cities on the

edge of large metropolitan regions Collectively, the experiences and understandings

(Lees, 2000; Bell and Jayne, 2006; Ori-Amoah, 2007) Embedded in this large urban and spectacular bias are Thrift’s concerns for grand theories “which aspire to rigorous standards of exactness” (Thrift in Massey, 1999) and “towering structures of

categories lowering over ant-like actions of humans” (Thrift, 1996: 4)

Returning to urban theory as a whole, urban space and the processes that shape urban space have been conceptualized, generalized, and at times cast in rigid

vocabularies that are assumed to describe and explain most urban spaces and

processes This was the starting point for my research, a general discomfort as to how our urban understandings limit their applicability and how our urban vocabularies may have become so generalized that their force of meaning has been lost For

example, a word as simple and common as suburban (or suburb) has become an enigma in the modern metropolis (Lang, et al., 2008; McManus and Ethington, 2007; Keil, 2013) Suburban may have once adequately and neatly described early

commuter suburbs (Jackson, 1985), romantic middle-class bedroom enclaves

(Fishman, 1987), and a certain way of life (Fava, 1956; Riesman, 1957; Gans, 1967) But today, the suburban has become elusive, difficult to identify and differentiate from what is city or the urban (Berube, et al., 2005; Fishman, 1987; Katz and Bradley, 2013; Katz and Lang, 2003; Lang and LeFurgy, 2007)

Changes in what constitutes the suburban are evidenced by the many attempts

at (re)naming suburban spaces For example, Techno-city and Techno-burbs

(Fishman, 1987), Edge Cities (Garreau, 1991), Boomburbs (Lang and Simmons, 2001), The Geography of Nowhere (Kunstler, 1993), and Bistroville (Brooks, 2000)

are a few descriptors However, the limited success of these namings demonstrates how powerful the vocabulary of the suburban is and how it dominates our urban understandings Unfortunately, when all spaces, other than the rural, outside the historic urban core are cast as suburban (Lang, et al., 2008), it becomes challenging to understand changes (McManus and Ethington, 2007) in spatial formations, socio-economics, lifestyles, and governance (Keil, 2013; Hamel and Keil, 2015) because they become obscured and possibly missed, as they are hidden in the shadows of our suburban vocabulary

2004), or a wealthy New England rural village (Wood, 1997) is defined as

gentrification Once again, such generalizations may obscure our understanding of nuanced, small incremental change, and the remaking of space that is not neatly explained or understood as gentrification

So how can we better understand smaller urban spaces, suburban spaces, and the remaking of urban space? That is the topic and challenge of this thesis To

accomplish this, I explore small-city urbanism, suburbanization, gentrification, and urban change by introducing and utilizing the vocabulary of ecology, specifically, ecological resilience (Holling, 1973; Gunderson and Holling, 2002: Gunderson, et at., 2010) as a metaphorical and theoretical means of thinking about urban space and the remaking of space By utilizing ecology and ecological resilience, I attempt to move beyond or overcome the juxtaposition of urban and suburban space and large urban versus (or the exclusion of) small urban space Therefore, I have chosen West

Hartford Center, a suburban space in the smaller metropolitan region of Hartford, Connecticut to explore as a case study

1.10 The Remaking of Urban Space

I intentionally chose the phrase the remaking of urban space (or the remaking

of space) as a means of discussing urban change without having to utilize the

vocabularies of suburbanization and gentrification since I am uncomfortable with their meanings, how they have been generalized, and the fact that I ague for their limitations to inform us about specific kinds of urban space The remaking of urban space in its most simplistic meaning is about urban change and the inevitability of change (Alberti, 2009; Holling and Orians 1971) In other words, regardless of scale, site, situation, spatial organization, form, and function, urban space changes over time In addition, urban space is fluid, in a perpetual state of flux, and continually being created and re-created The remaking of urban space, as a phase, recognizes this and allows us to discuss urban change without having to claim a specific kind of change—remaking—as being the result of a specific process, such as suburbanization

The remaking of urban space also allows us to engage in a discussion about urban spaces (and the processes that remake urban space) that do fit well into the vocabularies of suburbanization and gentrification This is important in regard to the site and subject of this case study, West Hartford Center (the Center) The Center is

an historically suburban space (Jackson, 1985) that today is a metropolitan (Katz and Bradley, 2013; Teaford, 2006) or post-suburban space (Keil, 2013) While the

vocabularies of the metropolitan and the post-suburban indicate that the space of the Center has changed—once a definable suburban space—they are limited in their ability to inform as to what changed in West Hartford Center and to understand why and how that change occurred

This, from my perspective, results in a gap in our urban understandings in regards to how we understand and explain the remaking of an older suburban town center Furthermore, as will be discussed in this case study, the Center has always been a vibrant and prosperous space, never suffering the decline and rebirth that is typically described in our urban understandings of gentrification (Lees, et al., 2008, 2010) In recent decades, the Center has experienced a process of socio-economic upgrading similar to gentrification, yet this upgrading does not quite fit with how we typically understand gentrification In addition, the Center as once suburban and now possibly post-suburban, is outside the central city, the conventional spatial location gentrification

Specific to the case of West Hartford Center, the urban change or remaking of urban space that the Center has undergone is nuanced, challenging to explain and hard

to define as simply a process of suburbanization or gentrification This nuanced change, simply put, is that the Center went from being and functioning as a town center that serviced the local wants and needs of West Hartford to becoming a

metropolitan center of middle class hospitality and sociality While the Center is still definably suburban in many ways and has experienced an upgrading similar to

gentrification, the what, why, and how of the Center’s change is still fraught with ambiguity Therefore, as I attempt to explore and understand this ambiguous

1.20 Small-City Urbanism and Suburbanization

Before I introduce West Hartford Center, I want to discuss the challenge of small city urbanism and suburbanization Specifically, the need to understand how West Hartford Center both fits and does not fit into these categories West Hartford Center is located in metropolitan Hartford, an urban region of approximately 1.2 million persons Therefore, metropolitan Hartford, in the American urban context is neither large (the global city of New York (Sassan, 2001)) nor small (the non-

metropolitan city of Roswell, New Mexico (Paradis, 2002)) Furthermore,

metropolitan Hartford is not considered one of the Second Tier Cities, especially rapid

growth second tier cities (Markusen, et al., 1999) Therefore, I define metropolitan

Hartford as a smaller metropolitan and urban place that falls somewhere in between

large and small However, I also want to avoid “any minimum or maximum

requirements of small urbanity” (Bell and Jayne, 2009: 689) and situate metropolitan Hartford within the broad category of small city urbanism, while recognizing that metropolitan Hartford differs from other small cities and small city urbanism

(Burayidi, 2013; Ori-Amoah, 2007; Paradis, 2000, 2002)

Recognizing that metropolitan Hartford falls into the realm of small city urbanism results in West Hartford and West Hartford Center being captured within the realm of small city urbanism (Bell and Jayne, 2006, 2009 However, West

Hartford Center is not the historic core or central place of the metropolitan area—nor

is it a small city core to a non-metropolitan area West Hartford is, by conventional definition a suburb (Jackson, 1985) More specifically, West Hartford is an older inner-ring suburban community and West Hartford Center, historically and

traditionally, is a suburban town center

Unfortunately, as a result of site, size, and situation, West Hartford Center—as

a (sub)urban space—hides in the shadow of the large urban bias, while being passed

over in the sprawling suburban search for Edge Cities (Garreau, 1991) and

Boomburbs (Lang and Simmons, 2001) West Hartford Center is situated somewhere between the historic core of downtown and the sprawling fringe of the post-suburban

In an attempt to understand the Center and the Center’s remaking of urban space, I will introduce and utilize ecological resilience (Holling 1973) by

conceptualizing urban space as complex adaptive (ecological) systems (Gunderson and Holling, 2002; Gunderson, et al., 2010) Ecological resilience can be understood

as “the capacity of a system [the urban-ecological system] to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure,” (Walker and Salt, 2006: xiii) My reason for drawing on ecological resilience is that at “the heart of resilience thinking is a very simple notion—things change” (Walker and Salt, 2006: 9-10) and the inevitability of urban change Urban space is not static Urban space is fluid and pliable Therefore, urban ecology and ecological resilience, as a metaphor and theoretical framework, provide a means of dealing with scale that fits with the challenge of small city

urbanism For example, we “need to look in detail at the actual political, economic, social, cultural, spatial and physical nature of small cities rather than judging them simply with reference to theories and measurements developed with reference to big cities and metropolises” (Bell and Jayne, 2009: 690) From my perspective, the

political, economic, social, cultural, spatial and physical natures of urban space—

small or large—are the manifold variables of complex adaptive (urban) systems

1.30 West Hartford, Connecticut

To provide context, this section explores and attempts to further situate

metropolitan Hartford and West Hartford in regard to small city urbanism,

suburbanization, and the remaking of urban space Hartford and suburban West

Hartford, are located in the northeastern United States midway between New York City and Boston, Massachusetts (see Map 1 below)—in one of the most urbanized regions in North America Connecticut, as of 2010, had a population of 3,574,097 persons (Census, 2010), smaller than that of the 14 largest metropolitan regions in the United States However, 91 percent, or 3,196,309 persons in Connecticut live in urbanized areas (Census, 2007)

Connecticut, unlike most states, does not have one dominant city, but a

constellation of many smaller central cities—Bridgeport, Hartford, New Haven, and Stamford (all less than 145,000 persons) While the central cities are small, the

metropolitan regions are not so small For example, metropolitan Hartford is the state’s largest region with 1,212,381 persons (Census, 2010) Of the 1,212,381

persons in the MSA, 924,859 persons or 76.8 percent live in urban areas (Census, 2010)

Map 2 Connecticut Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA)

The Hartford MSA is the large grey area in the center of the state

West Hartford, an inner ring suburb and one of 57 communities

(municipalities) that make up metropolitan Hartford (see Map 2 above), has an

estimated population of 63,268 (U.S Census, 2010) or 5.2 percent of the total

metropolitan population The boundary between West Hartford and Hartford is

approximately 2 miles west of Hartford’s downtown (the central business district),

and West Hartford Center is 3.7 miles west of Hartford’s downtown West Hartford Center is one of many suburban town centers in the metropolitan region In addition, the region is crisscrossed by numerous commercial strips and retail, office, and industrial development nodes

Amin and Graham claim “[t]he contemporary city is a variegated and multiplex entity—a juxtaposition of contradictions and diversities, the theater of life itself The city is not a unitary or homogeneous entity and perhaps it never has been”

(Amin and Graham, 1997; 418) Metropolitan Hartford is indeed a juxtaposition of

contradictions (Chen and Bacon, 2013: 5-6):

While Hartford is a small city, it is not as small when understood within the context of its metropolitan region Hartford is the 188th most populous city in the country, and yet the 43rd most populous metropolitan area With a

municipal population of 124,060 and metro population of 1,188,241 spread throughout 57 municipalities, the population of Hartford makes up only 10 percent of its metropolitan area, one of the lowest percentages for any American urban region The small municipality of Hartford has consistently ranked as one of the absolute poorest cities in the United States, while the Hartford metropolitan region surprisingly took the top spot among the world’s wealthiest regions, where a substantial upper middle class raises its per capita income above such well-established global cities as New York and Zurich Chen and Bacon continue (2013: 8):

For instance, in 2000, the U.S Census revealed that Hartford has the second highest poverty rate of any American city And yet in the same year Hartford’s MSA has the nation’s sixth highest median income This unfairly represents Hartford as one of the most economically depressed cities and most

socioeconomically polarized regions in the country In actuality, Hartford’s region is extremely differentiated For instance, the city has the nation’s most diverse ‘suburbs’ in terms of resident income

The contradictions of metropolitan Hartford create an interesting challenge in understanding and situating West Hartford Center within the region (see Appendix VI) Metropolitan Hartford has always been a polycentric region, beginning with the original settlements of the three separate, but neighboring, river communities of Windsor, Wethersfield, and Hartford in 1635 and 1636 (Love, 1914) In addition, the

“three river towns subsequently sent out new groups in the vicinity which led to the founding of ten additional towns” (Reps, 1965: 122) by 1650 This settlement pattern

is understandable in the context of the pre-industrial, pre-urban, and agrarian economy (Wood, 1997)

Hartford did not become the largest settlement in the metropolitan region until

1800 with a population 5,347 persons, 12.5% of the region’s 42,721 persons (State DECD) By 1850, Hartford’s population grew to 13,555 persons and the region had grown to 125,032 persons (State DECD) It is during the second half of the nineteenth century and first quarter of the twentieth century that Hartford became a central place (Baldwin, 1999) Similar to Los Angeles, Hartford’s centrality rose from its early adoption of a suburban streetcar system (Baldwin, 1999) Los Angeles’s, unique polycentric urban experience (Fishman, 1987; Hall, 2002; Jackson, 1985), most often contrasted with Chicago (Dear, 2002), is often credited to the Pacific Electric

Railway Hall explains, it is “the largest electric interurban system in the United States, serving 56 communities within a 100-mile radius of Los Angeles … [with] 1,164 miles of service…” (Hall, 2002: 304) He continues, “in the first decade of operation, 1900-10, the interurban transformed southern California: the population of Los Angeles County nearly tripled…” (Hall, 1998: 807)

The small urban center of Hartford and its surrounding region experienced a similar pattern of settlement and metropolitan growth based on the suburban streetcar network (Map 3 below) The first streetcar line was opened in 1863, and it was a suburban line that connected Hartford to Wethersfield (CT-MCM, 2004) Four more suburban lines were added in 1893 (CT-MCM, 2004), and by 1910 lines were built to all the suburbs (CT-MCM, 2004) In 1910 the Hartford region had over 200 miles of track (CT-MCM, 2005) connecting Hartford and 21 surrounding communities (see Map 3 above) Similar to Los Angeles, the Hartford region experienced significant growth during the streetcar era For example, from 1850 to 1900, the period when the majority of the streetcar system was built, the MSA area population more than doubled from 125,032 persons to 281,883 persons (CT, DECD)

It is during the streetcar era that Hartford became the central place to the polycentric region (Baldwin, 1999: 44-45):

…the trolley system was actually beginning to create a new spatial order In the 1890s the trolley system made central Hartford the hub of a metropolitan region Rails radiated from downtown to surrounding towns and villages, drawing them more fully into Hartford’s orbit … the trolleys brought people from outlying towns into Hartford to shop and to work

By 1900 metropolitan growth was outpacing Hartford’s central city growth

(Chart 1 below)—Hartford’s metropolitan revolution (Katz and Bradley, 2013)

occurred between 1900 and 1920 In addition, Hartford urbanized at the same time that it suburbanized Simultaneously, the centripetal forces of industrialization and transportation that were drawing the region in to Hartford as a central place, were creating centrifugal forces that propelled the city’s outward growth The forces of suburbanization were being fueled by Hartford’s growing metropolitan centrality

Map 3 Hartford Suburban Streetcar Map

The spatial history and organization of the Hartford metropolitan region is complex Therefore, situating West Hartford and West Hartford Center in the context

of urban theory and within metropolitan Hartford is also complex Regardless, for

lack of a better word, West Hartford is suburban, even though I am uncomfortable

with using the word suburban, in that it often implies similarity across the multiplicity

of communities in the suburban realm (McManus and Ethington, 2007; Keil, 2013)

West Hartford Center is a mature suburban town center (see Figure 1 below) In the

1980s West Hartford Center was a vibrant town center that adequately met and serviced some of the retail, service, and hospitality needs of the community, but it became a sleepy town center after 6:00pm with most shops and businesses closing (Grant, R Mahoney, VanWinkle, Interviews)

Today, West Hartford Center has become the regional center for middle-class hospitality and sociality (Feldman, Interview)—servicing the region, in addition to the local community This change, moving from the suburban town center to a regional center of middle class hospitality and sociality, raises questions as to how and why it

occurred How did this change in the function, appeal, and centrality of the Center occur? Was the Center’s remaking planned, a grand redevelopment scheme to brand

or theme the Center? Who were the actors and did they coordinate this change? If not, was this change emergent and self-organizing? Answering the how and why also raises further questions regarding how to describe and explain this space of West Hartford Center Is West Hartford Center still suburban? Or has the Center become urban? What are the vocabularies that help us to understand not only the space of the Center but also the Center’s remaking? Is the Center’s remaking explained and understood as gentrification, state-led regeneration, or something else?

Figure 1 West Hartford Center Aerial View (2012)

1.40 The Case of West Hartford Center

Uncomfortable with the large urban bias, I set out to explore a smaller suburban space in a smaller metropolitan region In doing so, I wanted to utilize this smaller suburban space as a means of thinking carefully about urban theory and our urban understandings—mostly based on large urban bias—and apply them to West Hartford Center as means of seeing how they help or limit our understandings of smaller urban space Therefore, the aim of this case study is to explore how this wealthy and older suburban town center, located in a smaller metropolitan region has changed, matured, evolved, and adapted (McManus and Ethington, 2007) over the past three decades To understand this process of change, this case study examines the remaking of urban space—and how the Center as a resilient (Holling, 1973;

Gunderson, et al., 2010) urban space can further inform our urban understandings of the remaking of urban space To accomplish this, I have investigated the remaking of West Hartford Center through the exploration of the following four questions (the first

being the primary question and questions two through four being supporting or exploratory questions):

1 What kind of space is West Hartford Center and how can we develop a vocabulary to explain it?

2 How and why did this kind of space emerge—the remaking of space?

3 Who were (and are) the change makers and what were their roles in the emergence of this kind of space?

4 Who are the users (consumers) of this space, how do they view and experience this space, and what role does it play in their everyday lives?

By exploring these four questions, the research unfolded and organized around understanding how this space has been created—or co-created—by three key groups

of actors: business owners, government, and consumers To explain how this research was conducted, the unfolding and unpacking of the Center, the Center’s remaking, and my findings, I will present this thesis in nine chapters, including this introduction

The first four chapters set the foundation for understanding the research and situating West Hartford Center in our urban understandings—urban studies, urban theory, and planning theory Chapter I is this introductory chapter Chapter II and

Chapter III provide literature reviews Chapter II Urban Theory – Conceptualizing

Urban Space and the Remaking of Space will focus on our understandings of small

city urbanism, urban and suburban space, and gentrification The intent will be to explore how we conceptualize these understandings and how they often fall short of informing us about the space of the Center and the Center’s remaking Chapter III

Ecological Resilience: Urban Ecology and the Remaking of Urban Space will

introduce and explore ecological resilience (Holling, 1973; Gunderson, et al., 2010) and how the ecological resilience paradigm can help us think about urban change and the remaking of urban space The aim of Chapter III is to construct a metaphorical and theoretical framework, based on ecological resilience, for conceptualizing and

exploring the remaking of urban space—specifically the remaking of West Hartford Center

Chapter IV Methods – Research Methodology will present my research

methodology and the specific methods that were employed The chapter will also explain why a case study approach was chosen along with a mixed methods approach

Chapter V Urban-Ecological Resilience – Understanding Change explores how we

understand change—what changed in the Center from 1980 through 2012 This will

be accomplished through the presentation and analysis of a storefront tenant database that was constructed to understand and explain how the use of storefronts, turnover in occupants, and overall use of the Center changed between 1980 and 2012 Ecological

resilience (Holling, 1973; Gunderson, et al., 2010), specifically, episodic change will

help us explore and think carefully about urban change and the remaking of urban space

Chapter VI Entrepreneurs and Restaurateurs – Emergence and Innovation

will explore how hospitality uses changed in the Center during the 1990s and then further explore how the hospitality uses continued to evolve from 2000 to 2012 The aim will be to show how small changes (slow moving variables), emergent and self-organizing actions, and small scale innovation can coalesce into meaningful changes

in urban space

Chapter VII Government Intervention – The West Hartford Way will explore

how government—the local state—intervened in the remaking of West Hartford Center This will include situating West Hartford’s interventions in the context of small city urbanism and suburban governance The chapter will also explore how West Hartford’s interventions differed from conventional approaches and how these differences can be understood and explained through urban resilience and a resiliency approach to (sub)urban governance (Holling and Orians, 1971; Holling and Goldberg; Walker and Salt, 2006)

Chapter VIII Consumption and Production of Space – Consumers and the

Co-creation of Space will explore the users—the consumers—of West Hartford Center

This will include exploring who the consumers of the Center are and how the consumers engage, understand, and experience the Center The chapter will conceptualize the consumers as active participants and how the active consumer is a co-creator—a producer—of space

The thesis will conclude with Chapter IX Conclusion where I will explore how

West Hartford Center, a resilient urban-ecological space, informs our urban understandings and the remaking of space In doing so, I will address my research questions, explaining West Hartford Center as a kind of urban space, the vocabularies

we can use to describe it, and how the remaking of West Hartford Center occurred

Chapter II

Urban Theory: Exploring and Conceptualizing Urban Space and

the Remaking of Space

be drawn into the discussion on West Hartford Center in the later empirical chapters

To accomplish this, the chapter will be presented in five sections: the first section will explore small city urbanism in the context of urban governance, planning, and regeneration The second will explore how we understand the urban—urban space—as a means of creating a foundation for our understanding of the suburban Section three will then explore how we understand the suburban—suburban space Section four will explore gentrification and how urban space is remade Section five will then explore similarities in how we conceptualize gentrification and

suburbanization The chapter will end with a brief conclusion and transition to Chapter III

2.10 Small City Urbanism

As discussed in the introduction, metropolitan Hartford and West Hartford Center fit within the framework of small city urbanism, yet West Hartford Center does not fit perfectly West Hartford Center fits within small city urbanism, primarily because it is not part of a large metropolitan region, nor is it a large urban jurisdiction

in its own right However, even though the Center is a space of small city urbanism,

the Center does not fit perfectly with how small cities and small city urbanism are conceptualized and understood Therefore, the Center creates challenges of context in regard to scale, situation, and governance of small city urbanism

In regard to scale, the Hartford metropolitan area is a smaller (Chen and

Bacon, 2013) urban region that is somewhere in between the scale of large (Sassan, 2001) and small (Paradis, 2000, 2002) city urbanism West Hartford, when considered

as a municipal jurisdiction, is approximately 65,000 persons, and on its own it could

be considered a small city However, it cannot escape from being part of the metropolitan area As a result, from the perspective of scale, West Hartford Center is ambiguous and hard to categorize, even though it is clearly outside the realm of large city urbanism Metropolitan Hartford and West Hartford Center highlight why Bell and Jayne “argue against any minimum or maximum requirements of small urbanity” (Bell and Jayne, 2009: 689)

West Hartford Center, being embedded within and part of the metropolitan area leads to the challenge of situation The Center’s situation is metropolitan, whereas much of the small city urbanism focuses on non-metropolitan cities (Burayidi, 2013; Champion and Hugo, 2004; Christopherson, 2004, Garrett-Petts, 2005; Ori-Amoah, 2007; Paradis, 2000, 2002) Bell and Jayne explain “small cities must often (but not always) be theorized and hence defined in terms of the political and economic systems of a metropolitan region as a small city that is part of a city-region or indeed as a small city that is regionally dominant” (Bell and Jayne, 2009: 691) Therefore, we need to recognize and understand the differences between metropolitan and non-metropolitan cites

West Hartford’s situation is further complicated by the Center being suburban, part of the “non-central city” (Keil, 2013: 9) metropolitan realm, unlike a smaller metropolitan city, such as Middletown, Connecticut that is a historic core and central city (Burayidi, 2013) Bell and Jayne further explain that “at present any attempt to offer a rigorous definition of what constitutes a small city is problematic due to gaps

in current research” (Bell and Jayne, 2009: 691) West Hartford Center reveals yet another challenge and gap in small city urban research and understandings—our understanding of smaller suburban spaces within smaller metropolitan regions

The challenges of scale and situation that may arise in the smaller and suburban space of West Hartford Center require that we also consider the conceptualization and implications of urban governance Specifically, we must consider how our understandings of both large and small city urban governance inform us about governance in the smaller suburban space of West Hartford Center More specifically, how do our understandings of large and small, metropolitan and non-metropolitan, urban governance inform us about smaller metropolitan suburban governance and its implication in regard to the remaking of urban space?

Urban governance, planning, and regeneration—in both large and small city urbanism—are commonly conceptualized and explained, in regard to how urban space is remade, through a framework of government (i.e planning, urban design, urban policy) as a primary driver of urban change (Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Burayidi, 2001, 2013; Peck and Ward, 2002; Larice and Macdonald, 2013) For example, the influence of government planning, grand redevelopment schemes, business improvement districts, tax increment financing, and public-private partnerships are often privileged as the key drivers of state-led large urban regeneration (Larice and Macdonald, 2013; Smith, 1996, 2002; Zukin, 1989, 2010; Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Lees, et al., 2008, 2010) In addition, similar

governance practices are also evident and viewed as key drivers of state-led small urban regeneration (Burayidi, 2013; Champion and Hugo, 2004; Christopherson,

2004, Garrett-Petts, 2005; Ori-Amoah, 2007; Paradis, 2000, 2002)

It is not surprising that similar governance practices appear in both large and small city urbanism, since the tendency to generalize theories and practices down the urban hierarchy is well documented (Lees, 2000; Orori-Amoah, 2007) For example, Holling explains that “once a theory is formed, once it seems to resolve paradoxes, and once it passes some empirical tests, proponents are sorely tempted to extend its application beyond its natural context” (Holling, et al in Gunderson and Holling, 2002: 19) However, in the case of small city urbanism, this generalization down the urban hierarchy may be in part the result of “planners and other urban practitioners in small cities…have[ing] to rely on models and policies [from larger cities] that may not be suited to their particular situations” (Orori-Amoah, 2007: 4)

Related to this generalization of urban theories and practices down the urban hierarchy is the utilization of standardized approaches to address urban issues

Examples include, the promotion of twelve step programs by urban policy think-tanks (Leinberger, 2005), the utilization of templates such as the National Main Street Program (Buranyidi, 2001, 2013; Smith in Orori-Amoah, 2007), and the influence of categorizing “eight key principles that underscore successful downtown development efforts in small cities” (Robertson in Burayidi, 2001: 9)

The challenges of scale, situation, and governance, in the context of small city urbanism, highlight the need for not only more research on smaller cities, but also more dexterous and sophisticated approaches to small city urbanism (Bell and Jayne, 2009; Jayne, et al, 2010; Latham, 2003) Bell and Jayne “suggest that absolute size is less important, and that a more sophisticated understanding of a wider range of practices and processes than have dominated research to date is vital” (Bell and Jayne,

2009: 690) In comparison to the large city urbanism of say Fantasy City (Hannigan, 1998) and Landscapes of Power (Zukin, 1991), Paradis, in his study of the small non-

metropolitan city of Roswell, demonstrates the importance of more dexterous approaches and sophisticated understandings (2002: 38):

Purely, structure-based arguments that explain downtown redevelopment as logical responses to larger processes, however, do not take into account contingencies of locality, history, and agency rooted in specific places These contingencies demand a greater appreciation in geographical analysis while, at the same time, recognizing the significance of extra-local processes and trends

West Hartford Center, located in a smaller metropolitan region and as a suburban center, provides an opportunity to explore another kind of space within the lexicon of small city urbanism The Center affords us the opportunity to capture and understand some of “[w]hat is lost as a consequence of the bias towards large cities” (Bell and Jayne, 2009: 683), including the informal, nuanced, local context, and emergent forms of urban governance (Jacobs, 1961, 1966; Molotch, et al., 2000; Carpenter, et al in Gunderson and Holling, 2002)

Unfortunately, much of our urban theory (Fainstein and Campbell, 2011; Short, 2006) and planning theory (Fainstein and Campbell, 2012; Birch, 2009;

Fishman, 1982, 2000), at times fall short of conceptualizing and explaining smaller urban spaces and suburban spaces (Keil, 2013) such as West Hartford Center That is

not to say our urban understandings are wrong or irrelevant to the Center’s remaking—they do help to inform What it does say is that the partial understandings provided by large-urban accounts may miss the nuances as to how various forces and structures organize in smaller spaces (Bell and Jayne, 2006, 2009; Latham, 2003; Paradis, 2000, 2002)

2.20 Exploring the Urban

In the simplest of terms, West Hartford Center is a suburban town center But

how does the phrase ‘a suburban town center’ inform us about this space? From it, we know the Center is part of the suburban realm, outside the central city, and part of a suburban community But what is the suburban and how do we understand the suburban as a kind of urban space? How do our understandings of the suburban help

us understand West Hartford Center? To answer these questions, I will explore the suburban and what is conceptualized as suburbia However, since the suburban is part

of the urban realm and symbiotically related to the central city, I first want to explore the city and what is urban

The symbiotic relationship between city and suburb is important, since our urban understandings have created meaningful differentiations and juxtapositions between what is urban (the city) and what is suburban (areas outside the central city) (Jackson, 1985; Fishman, 1987; Nicolaides and Wiese, 2006) While the central city and the suburban are both forms of urban space, they are generally viewed as different kinds of space “For Americans the notion of city limits has been vital to the concept

of suburbia Unlike Britain, where the term suburb refers to a peripheral area whether

inside or beyond a major city’s boundaries, in the United States the federal census bureau and most commentators have defined suburbia as that zone within

metropolitan areas but beyond the central city limits” (Teaford, 2008: ix-x) This is an important distinction, since in America we under conceptualize the suburban as “the political distinction between suburb and central city” (Teaford, 2008: ix-x) and we often pass over the suburban areas within our cities

From Teaford’s explanation, the urban can be defined in its simplest form as the central city (the political state) and the historical core of today’s metropolitan region This understanding gives rise to the concept of centrality (Park and Burgess,

1925; also see Latham, et al., 2009; Hall, 1998), the city as a central place (Wood, 1997) The urban or city can also be defined by its physical form (Larice and Macdonald, 2013; Duany, et al., 2010; Cole, 2011): architecture, the grid-iron street formation (Warner and Whittemore, 2012), and high density multi-story development (Fogelson, 2001) While these physical forms are essential parts of the urban, other factors also influence how we conceptualize the city Jane Jacobs (1961) describes an urban lifestyle, a way of life that focused on the neighborhood, the block, or place-based understanding of community (Latham, et al., 2009) For Jacobs, this way of life played out as a dance, her sidewalk ballet as the essence of the urban lifestyle and experience From Jacobs’ perspective, the urban also included a mixture of forms (the short block, diversity in architecture, and density of buildings), a mixture of uses (commercial and residential), and of social relationships (neighbors, store owners, and chance meetings) that coalesce to create an interesting and authentic urban

environment, experience, and lifestyle (see also Mumford, 1961; Duany, et al., 2000; Kunstler, 1993, 1998; Zukin, 2010)

Another means of understanding the urban (or city) is through examining the negative attributes For example, “[t]he city today, for many, spells crime, dirt, and race tension, more than it does culture and opportunity” (Riesman, 1957: 131)

Fishman explains, “[s]uburbia can never be understood solely in its own terms It must always be defined in relation to its rejected opposites: the metropolis Buried deep within every subsequent suburban dream is a nightmare image of eighteenth century London” (Fishman, 1987: 27) For Mumford, in “every age, then, the fear of the city’s infections and the attractions of the open countryside provided both negative and positive stimulus” (Mumford, 1961: 487)

Based on these perspectives, the city is not simply dangerous, but juxtaposed against the natural beauty and tranquility of the countryside and the suburban The urban or city, in regard to physical forms (architecture, streets, and density) or its sociality (the sidewalk ballet, neighborhood, and community) is conceptualized as positive (Jacobs, 1961; Mumford, 1961) However, urban or city is also

conceptualized as negative when viewed through the lens of the socio-economic ills

of crime, poverty, disease, and anti-social behavior (Jackson, 1985; Fishman, 1985) Therefore, the urban and city, are simultaneously conceptualized and understood as positive and negative depending on which attributes are being considered Fishman’s,

“suburbia can never be understood solely in its own terms” (Fishman, 1987: 27) highlights the symbiotic relationship that results as the city defines the suburban and the suburban defines the city This symbiotic relationship of the urban and suburban creates a paradox of sorts, where the urban cannot be understood without being juxtaposed against the suburban and vice-versa, which then begs the question whether one can be conceptualized or understood without the other

So what is the urban or city? The perspectives above collectively unpack the urban as not simply the central city, but as a complex mosaic of the built environment and the socio-economic qualities of this environment (Holling and Orians, 1971; Amin and Thrift, 2002) It is a density of multi-story buildings, gridiron streets, a mixture of architecture and uses, and lively sidewalks that provide a dense experience

of sociality It is gritty and possibly a place of danger Unfortunately, when these conceptualizations of the urban or city are applied to West Hartford Center, they result in a mixed message and partial understanding The Center’s architecture, uses, street design, sidewalks, and sociality display many traits of the urban and yet, these traits are not fully realized in what the urban theorists above have described The Center’s building design, scale, and massing are mixed Uses are mixed, but dominated by commercial use, and most residential uses are adjacent, not within the Center The sidewalks provide a dense ballet of sociality, but it is neither the same dance, nor the same performers that Jacobs (1961) described In addition, the Center

is not a place of danger, crime, and social ills as described by Riseman (1957) and Mumford (1961) and the Center’s spatial location is suburban So if the Center cannot

be fully understood as urban or city, can it be understood as suburban?

2.30 Exploring the Suburban

To begin, to understand the suburban as a location, I return to Teaford’s (2008) explanation above and the suburban in the American tradition being understood as a separate political state outside of the central city While this distinction provides some context for differentiating between urban and suburban places, it does not tell us much else about suburban space, other than being conceptualized as a separate political state outside of the central city

The suburban is also part of the urban or the process of urbanization or suburbanization “The modern suburb was a direct result of this unprecedented urban growth It grew out of a crisis in urban form that stemmed from the inability of the premodern city to cope with explosive modern expansion It also reflected the unprecedented growth in wealth and size of an upper-middle-class merchant elite” (Fishman, 1987: 19) What Fishman is describing is not only the importance of urban expansion (spatial growth or urbanization), but also the importance of a critical mass

of an emergent wealthier class that could afford an alternative to urban living In this regard, suburbanization is not simply about spatial location, but also about changes in the socio-economic structures of urban society

Related to changes in socio-economics is the economic symbiosis between city and suburb—the divergence in centrality of work and home—which becomes key

to understanding the suburban as a location and lifestyle choice “A location like Clapham gave them the ability to take the family out of London without taking leave

of the family business” (Fishman, 1987: 53), highlights the suburban, at least historically, as physically removed from the urban core, but economically tethered to the city Therefore, the suburban can be understood as a location outside the urban core (within or beyond the city limits) that is economically bound to the city—as is the case for Jackson’s (1985) claiming of Brooklyn Heights as America’s first commuter suburb

In this regard, whether the suburb is within the city limits or beyond is less important than the spatial separation between the urban and suburban and the economic relationships that tether the suburb to the city (Braxandall and Ewen, 2000; Bruegmann, 2005; Kruse and Sugrue, 2006) While spatial separation and economic relationship are historically important (Jackson, 1985; Fishman, 1987), they are less significant and more difficult to distinguish as the processes of urbanization or suburbanization have expanded in space and time, filling in the spatial and economic gaps that once separated city and suburb (Fishman, 1987; Bruegmann, 2005) The modern suburb has become more self-sufficient (Fishman, 1987; Teaford, 2008) and the urban and suburban have melded into vast metropolitan regions (Katz and Bradley, 2013; Keil, 2013: Hanlon, et al., 2010; Mattingly in Lang and Miller, 1997)

With the spatial and economic relationships between city and suburb blurred (Drummond and Labbe in Keil, 2013) and in a constant state of flux, the physical form become an easy means of differentiating between what is conceptualized as urban and as suburban In regard to form, the suburban has been defined in the terms

of picturesque landscapes (Jackson, 1985; Fishman, 1987), the country cottage or single family house (Davis, 1835; Downing, 1841; Beecher, 1841; Clark, 1976; Archer, 1983, 2005; Jackson, 1985), large house lots and ornamental lawns (Wiedenmann, 1870; Jackson, 1985), and curvilinear street layouts (Bushnell, 1864; McLaughlin and Beveridge, 1977: Fishman, 1987; Sutton, 1997) Historically, these forms, combined with the outlying country location, have conceptualized the

suburban as the ideal space of middle-class habitation—the idyllic blending of country and city (Sutton, 1997; Roper, 1973; Fishman, 1987; Martinson, 2000) that can still be seen in today’s contemporary suburbs (Duncan and Duncan, 2004)

In addition to spatial location, economics, and form, the suburban can also be conceptualized as a way of life (Fava, 1951; Riseman, 1957) The suburban way of life is often associated with domesticity (Fishman, 1987; Marsh, 1990; Beecher, 1841; Bushnell, 1864; Beecher and Stowe, 1869) and conspicuous consumption (Jackson, 1985; Veblen, 2009; Stowe, 1865) Jackson explains conspicuous consumption through Weidenmann (1870) and the ornamental lawn “The well-manicured yard became an object of great pride and enabled its owner to convey to passers-by an impression of wealth and social standing—what Thorstein Veblen would later label

‘conspicuous consumption.’ Such a large parcel of land was not a practical resource in the service of a livelihood, but a luxury in the service of gracious living” (Jackson, 1985: 60) Braxandall and Ewen (2000) also explain how the urban middle-class of New York City looked to the lifestyles of the Robber Barons on the North Shore of Long Island as the pinnacle of achievement and how this translated into the

suburbanization of Long Island (see also Jackson, 1985)

When viewed collectively, suburban location, economic ties to the city, form, domesticity, and the suburban way life can be conceptualized as economic, social, and cultural forces being organized and reorganized around existing settlement patterns (Wood, 1997; Baldwin, 1999) and changing transportation technologies and systems (Warner, 1962; Hall, 2002) To say this another way, the economic, social, and cultural forces manifest as the spatial manifestation of shifting centrality For

example, Harris explains that as the process of suburbanization continues to spread outward, older suburban spaces are “becoming more central” (Harris in Keil, 2013: 37) Another example, is the modern manifestation of domesticity and the suburban way of life as “the way in which our lives are now centered inside the house, rather than on the neighborhood or the community […] Residential neighborhoods have become a mass of small, private islands; with the back yard functioning as a wholesome, family-oriented, and reclusive place” (Jackson, 1985: 280) Filion further explains, “[t]ime budgets and work and consumption behavior are tributary of the nature of activities present in suburbs and their distribution” (Filion in Keil, 2013: 40) In this regard, the suburban, not simply as location and economic ties, but as

form, domesticity, and a way of life has created a new American city (Bushnell, 1864)

that spreads out across the landscape

Central to the criticism of this shift away from an urban way of life (Jacobs, 1961; Mumford, 1961) to a suburban way of life (Kunstler, 1993; Marshall, 2005) is the retreat into the private space of home and family Mumford explains (1961: 486):

In the mass movement into the suburban areas a new kind of community was produced, which caricatured both the historic city and the archetypal suburban refuge: a multitude of uniform, unidentifiable houses, lined up inflexibly, at uniform distances, on uniform roads, in a treeless communal waste, inhabited

by people of the same class, the same income, the same age group, witnessing the same television performances, eating the same tasteless pre-fabricated foods, from the same freezers, conforming in every outward and inward respect to a common mold, manufactured in the central metropolis

What is most interesting about these critiques of the suburban is that they have remained constant for decades (Riesman, 1957; Jacobs, 1961; Jackson, 1985;

Kunstler, 1993; Hayden, 2003; Beauregard, 2006), even though the “success of the American suburbs, like that of a film panned by the critics but a hit with the public, is best measured by the size of its audience” (Lang in Lang and Miller, 1997: 5; see also Beuka, 2004) This creates a complexity in our understanding of the suburban For example, Zukin who is critical of the suburban as a “Wal-Mart wasteland” (Zukin, 2010: 104) also recognizes that “[i]n a cultural sense, no single clear-cut landscape represents the contemporary American community Nor do we have spatial images of the built environment that would adequately describe the landscape of “metropolitan deconcentration’—neither urban nor suburban—in which most Americans live” (Zukin, 1991: 20)

Gans argues that “Levittown is not a typical suburb, but when so many Americans, of almost all ages and incomes, are suburban, there is no such thing as a typical suburb” (Gans, 1982: vi; see also Ekers, et al in Hamel and Keil, 2015) Zukin’s (1991) metropolitan deconcentration has become, for Teaford (2006) and

Katz and Bradley (2013) the metropolitan revolution “Our language has not yet

caught up with the realities Often when we refer to cities we are actually referring to the broader economic, environmental, and infrastructure networks of the entire metropolitan region of which a city is a part In this sense, it is difficult to separate the city from its larger metro region—or separate the metro from the city In today’s world, the two are inextricably linked” (Katz and Bradley, 2013: vii) This metropolitan perspective draws the suburban into what is conceptualized as the urban,

or for Keil (2013), the post-suburban

The difficulty of separating the urban and city (or the suburban) from the metropolitan is evident in recent criticisms claiming the suburbanization of the city (Hammett and Hammett, 2007) Nijman explains, the “blurring between city and suburb has been reinforced in recent years by a ‘return’ to the city of middle- and upper-middle class households Many city centers have witnessed the gentrification of once derelict neighborhoods, especially in the United States” (Nijman in Keil, 2013:

168) Add to this suburbanization of the city the urbanization of the suburbs (Lang, et

al., 2008) and the urban, suburban, metropolitan, and post-suburban become even more blurred For example, Muller explains, “suburban downtowns are evolving into more complex and sophisticated activity centers [ ] many suburban downtowns are maturing into full-fledged urban centers as their land-use complexes diversify and perform even more important economic, social, civic, and recreational functions” (Muller, 1997: 46-47)

Is it possible that the city is not simply being suburbanized (or the suburbs urbanized), but that spatial location, form, and lifestyle that historically defined and differentiated the urban and suburban have now become less meaningful and an inadequate means of defining or differentiating the urban and suburban? That qualities of middle and upper class habitation—clean, safe, and aesthetically pleasing—are now found in both the city and suburbs and dominate both suburban and gentrified spaces of the urban (Bruegmann, 2005) Add to this claim of the

suburbanization of the city the claim of a metropolitan revolution (Teaford, 2006;

Katz and Bradley, 2013), the urban renaissance that often relies on metropolitan scale statistics (Florida, 2000, 2005; Glaseser, 2012), and the attempts to differentiate between what is urban and what is suburban become even more convoluted (Fishman, 1987; Katz and Lang, 2003; Berube, et al., 2005) Keil explains (2013: 8):

we might now speak about living in an era of post-suburbanization where the suburbs as the newly built subdivisions at the city’s edge are fading into memory and give way to complex, variably scaled, functionally differentiated, and socioeconomically mixed metropolitan structures that contain rather than constrain natures

Other than form, the political state, and possibly density, there appears to be little difference between the urban and the suburban The urban and suburban have melded together to form a metropolitan space that is a constellation of spaces (Keil, 2013) no longer understandable simply as one or the other—urban or suburban As a result, space is now more often defined and understood by the qualities of space Often these qualities are what appeal to a middle or upper class consumers (Bruegmann, 2005: 4):

Gentrification at the center and sprawl at the edge have been flipsides of the same coin In a typically paradoxical situation, no matter how much the new, more affluent residents profess to like the ‘gritty’ urban character of the place,

so different in their minds to the subdivision of the far suburbs, what makes the neighbourhood attractive today are less the things that are traditionally urban but those that are not The most important of these are sharply lowered population densities, fewer poor residents, less manufacturing activity, and the things that the Lower East Side finally shares with suburbs: reliable plumbing, supermarkets with good produce, and a substantial cohort of middle-class residents

Unfortunately, what is missed or lost in the critiques of the banal suburban and the suburbanized urban is the “importance of spontaneous, loosely institutionalized, emergent trends within cities” (Latham, 2003: 1702) and slow variables of change (Walker and Salt, 2006) that have remade space once definable as urban, city, or suburban into a multiplicity of new hybrid spaces that escape these simple definitions For example, by paying attention to the slow moving variables of change (Walker and Salt, 2006), the shift away from the urban and the suburban to the hybrid spaces of the metropolitan (Teaford, 2006; Katz and Bradley, 2013) reveals that slow moving changes in structures such as the traditional family (Amin and Thrift, 2002; Gallagher, 2013) have the ability to remake and reorganize domesticity and centrality That is, the move away from the traditional family and conventional practices of say eating

the family dinner at home (Urry, 2007), results in new social practices that can draw domesticity out of the home and into public spaces, creating new public cultures (Latham, 2003; Bell, 2007)

New forms of public culture (Latham, 2003; Calhoun, et al., 2013) reorganized around existing settlement patterns (Wood, 1997) can result in the rise of centrality in new locations and the emergence of new hybrid space For example, older suburban centers that were once quiet in comparison to the traditional central business districts (Fogelson, 2001) can and have become vibrant spaces (Muller, 1997) of middle class consumption Brooks identifies one of these affluent inner-ring suburbs and calls it “bistroville” (2004: 27):

You usually don’t have to wander far from a Trader Joe’s before you find yourself in bistroville These are inner-ring restaurant-packed suburban town centers that have performed the neat trick of being clearly suburban while still making it nearly impossible to park In these new urbanist zones, highly affluent professionals emerge from their recently renovated lawyer foyers on Friday and Saturday nights, hoping to show off their discerning taste in olive oils They want sidewalks, stores with overpriced French children’s clothes stores to browse in after dinner, six-dollar-a-cone ice-cream vendors, and plenty of restaurants They don’t want suburban formula restaurants They want places where they can offer disquisitions on the reliability of the risotto, where the predinner complimentary bread slices look like they were baked by Burgundian monks, and where they can top off their dinner with a self-righteous carrot smoothie

West Hartford Center, essentially, is bistroville and while Brooks may view

these spaces as ‘clearly suburban,’ such a claim does not fit with the critiques of suburban banality (Kunstler, 1993; Zukin, 2010) Bistroville is simply one example of

a multiplicity of hybrid spaces that have emerged and shape the metropolitan city (Brooks, 2004; Katz and Bradley, 2013) Therefore, if we are to better understand these new spaces of the metropolitan and the why and how of their remaking, then we not only need to understand the slow variables of change, but must also further unpack our urban and suburban vocabularies that may limit our ability to conceptualize these new hybrid spaces For example, Harris explains (Harris in Keil, 2013: 37):

It is fruitless to try to identify the moment when my block, and others like it, ceased to be suburban, or when a periurban districts become solidly suburban Indeed, to speak of zones at all is as much a matter of convenience as of reality They are products of a continuous process, made up of innumerable

events By the time residents become aware that neighborhood-wide change has happened, it’s history

In addition, we also need to move beyond the critiques that reduce these new spaces

as being simply suburban or dismissed as a geography of nowhere (Kunstler, 1993;

1997)

2.40 Exploring Gentrification

I now want to explore gentrification, including state-led urban regeneration, as

a means of understanding the remaking of urban space The reason for this is that gentrification is the closest of the urban understandings we have in urban and planning theory (Fainstein and Campbell, 2011, 2012) to make sense of the remaking

of West Hartford Center In addition, I further explore how the processes of suburbanization and gentrification are conceptualized in similar ways in our urban understandings

The word gentrification was first coined by Ruth Glass in 1964 as a means of understanding neighborhood change (Glass in Lees, et al., 2010: 7):

One by one, many of the working class quarters of London have been invaded

by the middle classes—upper and lower Shabby, modest mews of cottages—two rooms up and two down—have been taken over, when their leases have expired, and have become elegant, expensive residences Larger Victorian houses, downgraded in an earlier or recent period—which were used as lodging houses or were otherwise in multiple occupation—have been upgraded once again Nowadays, many flats or ‘houselets’ (in terms of the new real estate snob jargon) The current social status and value of such dwellings are frequently in inverse relation to their size, and in any case enormously inflated by comparison with previous levels in their

neighborhoods Once this process of ‘gentrification’ starts in a district, it goes

on rapidly until all or most of the original working class occupiers are displaced, and the whole social character of the district is changed

Since Glass coined the word, the concept of gentrification has attracted much interest, inspired volumes of research, and created many debates on its causes and effects However, gentrification existed long before 1964 Lees explains,

“[g]entrification…began before the term itself was coined […] for example, the Haussmannization of Paris Baron Haussmann…demolished the residential areas in which poor people lived in central Paris, displacing them to make room for the city’s now famous tree-lined boulevards which showcase the city’s monuments” (Lees, et

al., 2008: 5) The Haussmann plan and the reconstruction of central Paris is important because it provides a historical context for both gentrification and state-sponsored regeneration While Glass was describing an organic and mostly naturally occurring phenomenon of urban change in London, the Haussmann plan and redevelopment of central Paris, link both gentrification, state-led regeneration, and suburbanization (Keil, 2013)

Zukin provides a simplified definition Gentrification “occurs when a higher class of people move into a neighborhood, make improvements to property that cause market prices and tax assessments to rise, and so drive out the previous, lower-class residents” (Zukin, 1989: 5) Freeman explains gentrification as “a process that benefits the haves to the detriment of the have-nots It is a continuation of the history

of marginalized groups being oppressed by the more powerful And always, gentrification leads to the displacement of poor marginalized groups” (Freeman, 2006: 59)

The influx of higher class persons into a neighborhood is a key ingredient of

gentrification However, gentrification as defined above is also dependent on the displacement, “the negative consequences of gentrification—the rising housing expense burden for poor renters, and the personal catastrophes of displacement, eviction, and homelessness…” (Lees, et al., 2008: 73) While the influx of wealth and displacement of the poor, together help to define gentrification, the process and outcomes can also be more textured and nuanced For example, Freeman explains,

“[m]y conversations with residents of Clinton Hill and Harlem, however, reveal a more nuanced reaction toward gentrification If gentrification were a movie character,

he would be both villain and knight in shining armor, welcome by some and feared and loathed by others, and even dreaded and welcomed at the same time by the same people” (Freeman, 2006: 60) Freeman’s research demonstrated that many residents welcomed the upgrading of the neighborhood and at the same time they expressed concerns about displacement

Understanding gentrification as both an influx of wealth and displacement of those with lesser means raises the question of how gentrification can help us

understand the remaking of West Hartford Center—a commercial town center of a mostly wealthy suburban community Zukin explains that gentrification can result in

the displacement of not only the poor, but also of businesses For example, “in the case of lofts, the social class distinctions between old (artist) residents and new (non-artist) residents are somewhat blurred, and the real victims of gentrification through loft living are not residents at all Before some of the artists were chased out of their lofts by rising rents, they had displaced small manufacturers, distributors, jobbers, and wholesale and retail sales operations” (Zukin, 1989: 5)

Zukin’s recognition of business displacement also as a form of gentrification demonstrates the complexity of how our understandings of gentrification have widened In fact, there are now many definitions of gentrification “As the process of gentrification has mutated over time, so have the terms used to explain and describe it

… The term ‘rural gentrification’…refers to gentrification of rural areas, and it studies the link between new middle-class settlement, socioeconomic and cultural

transformations of the rural landscape, and the subsequent displacement and marginalization of low-income groups” (Lees, et al., 2008: 129) Lees also recognizes

‘new-build gentrification’ and ‘super-gentrification, or financification’ (Lees, 2000, 2003b; Butler and Lees, 2006) “Here we find a further level of gentrification which is superimposed on an already gentrified neighborhood, one that involves a higher financial or economic investment in the neighborhood than previous waves of gentrification and requires a qualitatively different level of economic

resource…driven largely by globally connected workers employed in the City of London or on Wall Street” (Lees, et al.,, 2008: 130) Lees also defines “‘Commercial gentrification’…the gentrification of commercial premises or commercial streets or areas; it has also been called ‘boutiqueification’ or ‘retail gentrification’” (Lees, et al., 2008: 131) This is possibly the closest form of gentrification in regard to West Hartford Center

With so many forms of gentrification being defined, it may be reasonable to

assume that any socio-economic upgrading of space—residential or commercial—can

be defined and understood as gentrification However, claiming that any economic upgrading of space is gentrification can be a risky proposition for two reasons First, such a claim could imply that neighborhoods and properties should remain constant, as they are, and cannot change over time without running the risk of gentrification Second, such a claim could also imply that the flow of investment capital into an area is undesirable because of the risk of displacement The

socio-generalization of gentrification to include most forms of economic upgrading of space has resulted in gentrification being viewed as the primary means of explaining and understanding the remaking of urban space Unfortunately, such a generalized understanding of gentrification may also limit our ability to understand the remaking

of space, especially the remaking of spaces that have always been wealthy and where poorer persons or marginal businesses have not been displaced

It is not that I disagree with our understandings of gentrification or the legitimate concerns of inequities and the threat of displacement My concern is that the generalization of our understandings of gentrification has resulted in most of our understanding of the remaking of urban space as resultant from the “fundamental inequities of capitalist property markets, which favor the creation of urban environments to serve the needs of capital accumulation, often at the expense of the needs of home, community, family, and everyday social life” (Lees, et al., 2008: 73)

Is it reasonable to pit the inequities of capitalist property markets and capital accumulation against the ideals of home, community, family, and everyday social life? In the context of urban space and the remaking of space, the extent to which urban environments are created and re-created to simply favor capital accumulation is questionable In addition, even if the remaking of space favors capital accumulation, can we not question the extent to which it is at the expense of home, community, family, and everyday social life?

I find the perspective of the political economists too limiting It limits the possibility that the remaking of urban space may be a two-way street, a symbiotic relationship between capitalist producers and consumers For example, Thrift explains his “difficulty…with keeping production and consumption separate: producers try to put themselves in the place of consumers, consumers contribute their intellectual labour and all kinds of work to production in the cause of making better goods, in a

kind of generalized outsourcing, migrations regularly occur between production and

consumption, and vice versa” (Thrift, 2008: 33) Perhaps our “tastes as consumers—tastes for lattes and organic food, as well as for green spaces, boutiques, and farmers’ markets—now define the city, as they also define us” (Zukin, 2010: 27) In regard to the remaking of urban space, the production of space coalesces with the consumption

of space Middle-class ideals of the consumer class are projected onto the space, shaping the production of the space (at times even co-opting space (Thrift in Massey,

et al., 1999)) into the kind of space the middle-class not only inhabitants, but desires

to consume Consumers, living their everyday lives are “imagineering…an alternative urbanism” (Ley, 1996: 15) and “[c]onsumption has quite literally helped to build a new world” (Latham, 2003: 1713) through new forms of public culture These perspectives open up the opportunity for new understandings of the remaking of space The possibility is that consumers also act as producers, and through their symbiotic relationship with capitalist producers they co-create urban space

In addition to the generalization of gentrification, our understandings of gentrification often come from large cities—London and New York (Smith 1996; Butler with Robson, 2003)—and then generalized and applied to other places (Lees, 2000) regardless of site, situation, size, or scale One size fits all is not uncommon in urban theory (Amin and Graham, 1997), especially in regard to gentrification Zukin,

in the context of loft living, demonstrates this large urban bias when she explains,

“[t]his new housing style emerged along canals of Amsterdam, near the London docks, and in the old sweatshop districts of New York Soon it spread to cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Galveston, and Portland…” (Zukin, 1989: 1) However, the majority of urban dwellers in America live in smaller urban places (Ori-Amoah, 2007), such as metropolitan Hartford, that have not experienced the same scale or intensity of gentrification as have large urban places such as New York City

Lees, who argues to reenergize the study of gentrification (Lees, 2000) explains, “[t]here has long been a bias towards research on large metropolitan cities in the gentrification literature” (Lees, et al., 2008: 171-172) Lees’ concern is that redevelopment schemes developed in large central cities, are now being adopted in small cities She explains that, “small cities borrow regeneration policies, plans, and ideas from bigger ones Think of the way that waterfront redevelopment, repackaged

by those people who first did Faneuil Hall in Boston, then South Street in New York and Inner Harbor Baltimore, sold the idea of putting the old commercial city back in touch with its waterfront” (Lees, et al., 2008: 171-172)

Lees also explains how government reports in Britain and the United States further spread gentrification policies down the urban hierarchy, “[t]he problem with

the British Towards an urban renaissance and the American The state of the cities

reports is that the policies advocated by them are ‘one size fits all’ Both the Urban

Task Force and HUD set out to plug the gap between successful cities and lagging cities—mostly small or mid-size cities—yet the plugs they promote are taken from examples in successful larger cities such as London These plans may not be appropriate for smaller cities such as Manchester or Sheffield, England, or Portland Maine, in the USA” (Lees, 2000: 391-392) This ‘one size fits all’ discussion of an urban renaissance does little to help us understand the remaking of West Hartford Center However, it does apply to Hartford and provides context to understanding the remaking of the Center

Hartford, since 1954 and the conception of the City’s first redevelopment scheme, Constitution Plaza (Hartford Courant, 1954: 19; Condon in Chen and Bacon, 2013), has utilized large redevelopment schemes similar to those implemented in most large cities Such schemes have included building sports arenas, riverfront

redevelopment, downtown housing (including lofts), shopping malls, entertainment districts, and tourist attractions (Kaplan, et al., 2009) However, Hartford’s continual implementation of such schemes for the past 60 years has resulted in little success in revitalizing Hartford (Chen and Bacon, 2013) even though these efforts have

succeeded in transforming and remaking the physical space of Hartford’s downtown This difference in outcomes questions the scale at which gentrification, and more specifically, state-sponsored regeneration schemes take place and their ability to regenerate smaller cities (Bell and Jayne, 2006) Ironically, while the City of Hartford and the State of Connecticut invest greatly in such grand regeneration schemes in Hartford, West Hartford Center, four-miles west of Hartford’s downtown, was successfully remade without the implementation of grand redevelopment schemes

Hartford further demonstrates the limitations of ‘one size fits all’ urban policy

in the context of housing and neighborhood regeneration policy One example is Hartford’s utilization of the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, cited by Zukin (2010), Freeman (2006) and Hackworth (2007), as a gentrification scheme in New York City—the primary funding mechanism for its neighborhood reinvestment schemes Poland explains in a report on Hartford’s Healthy Neighborhood program that the City of Hartford neighborhood redevelopment strategies, including LIHTC have done little more than cluster low-income households into already low-income neighborhoods (Poland, 2009)